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370 Erdal Taşbaş

and the answer received indicates that there were immigrants who
were still not settled yet, and that 70 of the 10859 immigrants sent to
Syria up to this time are still waiting to be settled .
34
At the time when 740 North Africans and Hejaz immigrants who
had previously come to Damascus and were waiting for resettlement
which had not yet been made, a further 253 Moorish immigrants sub-
sequently came to Damascus from Tunisia in June 1899. It was
thought that these newly arrived Maghrib immigrants were dispatched
to the Euphrates Valley and that their settlement there would cause
difficulties, so it was decided that all these immigrants would be sent
to the Hamidiye District in the Hama Sanjak of Syria . Of course,
35
those sent to Syria for resettlement were not only Tunisian immi-
grants. Until the end of 1899, thousands of Cretan immigrants were
also sent to Aleppo, Damascus and to the other cities of Syria. In the
telegram sent from the Syrian Province on October the 16 of the same
th
year 1899, it was reported to the Muslim Immigrant Commission that
immigrants were temporarily kept as guests in the inns and houses in
the center of the province in a miserable condition, there were difficul-
ties in allocating them to their resettlement destinations and, there-
fore, immigrants should be gradually sent to the region . The difficul-
36
ties experienced were the same for all the immigrants.
Tunisian immigrants, who were sent to Syria 4 months earlier, were
still waiting to be settled in miserable and desolate condition. One of these
immigrants, Mecit Bey, wrote a petition informing the government about
their situation. In the letter sent from the Government to the Ministry of
Internal Affairs dated the 16 of December 1908, it was mentioned that
th
the Algerians who had previously immigrated to Damascus were settled,
and it was requested that the necessary procedures for the settlement of
the Tunisian immigrants be completed . Again, as it is understood from
37
the letter dated the 2 of December 1908, written by the Immigration
nd
Commission, 1 million 63,071 kuruş was needed for the resettlement of
all the immigrants in Syria. There were about 1200 immigrants from Ru-
melia, the Caucasus, Tunisia and Algeria waiting as guests in the various
cities of Syria. It was impossible to cover the housing costs of such a large
number of immigrants from the provincial revenues. For this reason, the
immigrants who were in a precarious condition had to be provided with
shelters. In addition to provisions, 5000 lira in order to provide fuel and

34 E. Taşbaş, Halifenin Gölgesine Sığınanlar cit., p. 130
35 «Instruction for immigrants coming from Tunisia to Damascus via Beirut to settle
in Hama on the empty land». BOA (Presidency State Archives of the Republic of Turkey),
DH.MKT. 2220/45, 9 July1899.
36 E. Taşbaş, Halifenin Gölgesine Sığınanlar cit., p. 148-149.
37 «Correspondence about the work to be done about immigrants who migrated to
Syria to settle». BOA, DH.MKT. 2698/29, 31 December 1908.

Mediterranea - ricerche storiche - Anno XX - Agosto 2023
ISSN 1824-3010 (stampa) ISSN 1828-230X (online)